


bad work, soldier

by a_good_soldier



Series: s13 codas [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel (Supernatural)-centric, Episode: s13e14 Good Intentions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 09:14:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13854696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_good_soldier/pseuds/a_good_soldier
Summary: “Maybe I was brought back for war,” Castiel says. He doesn't say, war is all I'm good for.





	bad work, soldier

**Author's Note:**

> ok idk what this is (hence the lack of tags) but please enjoy!! we got some JUICY CAS CONTENT™ this episode, baby!!! also this features a sex scene because im extra as hell, thank u for ur patronage

Castiel is awake, and Castiel is alone. He rarely sleeps now; or, well, he rarely needs sleep. He does it sometimes when Dean wants to, when Dean needs someone to hold and Castiel is there and it’s nighttime and Sam is out of sight.

He’s not bitter. He doesn’t have any right to be bitter; Castiel, angel-killer, sibling-killer. He’s lucky the Winchesters will have him, considering all their talk of family. Maybe it’s fine because he does it for them. He’s not always sure what the rules are, but he knows that tonight, he’s broken another.

“Maybe I was brought back for war,” he’d said. Dean and Sam don’t remember; they’re not old enough. Castiel was there for the first war that ever was, the first murder that was not one person setting on another person but a whole group setting on another group. Admittedly, it was a ragtag clan with three weapons between them sneaking on the six-tent camp of another clan, but the angels on the ground were somehow still surprised by it. Even after witnessing the awesomeness of the Lord Almighty, the terror of Lucifer and Michael, to see humans claw and tear at each other for access to a watering hole was astonishing. It was violence unprecedented, and Castiel had stepped in to intervene, and was recalled for his behavior. It is the only time of resistance that Castiel can remember. Since then, he has been a perfect soldier.

“Maybe I was brought back for war,” he’d said. He hadn’t said, _War is all I’m good at_. He hadn’t needed to.

Sam and Dean have gone to sleep. Sam first, and Castiel thinks it’s a kindness on his part, a tolerance for Dean’s need for privacy. Castiel is certain Sam must know what they do in the dark — not the details, the heated fumbling or the slow, slow drag of Dean’s lips against his chest, the quiet way Dean murmurs _Cas_ when it’s good — but the fact that they hold each other, that they spend time together, their intimacy. Sam must know about it, and so Castiel never objects when Sam turns in early, even when Dean snarks through his involuntary blush, “Nah, c’mon, Sammy, I’m older’n you.”

But Sam went to sleep, and then Dean had held eye contact with Castiel for a long while. Castiel didn’t look away because he’s not sure he has the right; he tried to be human once, like Dean wanted, tried to stick to human boundaries and portray human limitations, but now he’s nothing like them. He is a sharpened tool, and the war that’s coming has no room for softness.

So Dean looked at him, and Castiel let him. Finally, Dean had just said, “Cas...”

“Yes, Dean?” he’d replied eventually, and Dean shook his head. And Dean left. And that was that.

Castiel has been standing guard. He keeps an eye on the door and the alarms, in case someone tries to come in. He keeps an eye on the spell he’s written down, in case it flutters away. He keeps an eye on the clock, in case it stops and he’s left without a record of his exile from Dean’s bedroom.

He hasn’t earned a reprieve from it. He hasn’t earned Dean’s trust; or, he has, and he’s broken it today, like he breaks it every time. Dean’s given him more chances than he’s ever deserved in his long, misbegotten existence, and it will take more than one night to earn Dean’s trust again. He doesn’t like to think about the word love. It seems too mutual for what they’re doing.

“Cas,” he hears from behind him, and Castiel turns around. There’s Dean, in his housecoat and his slippers, bags under his eyes. Castiel glances at the clock. 2:15 AM.

“Dean,” he says, getting up. “What’s wrong?”

Dean laughs, and Castiel reads exhaustion in the slope of his shoulders, self-disgust in the twist of his mouth. If Castiel were human, his heart would ache. He doesn’t like the memory of that feeling. “Even after the fucked up shit you pulled, I still miss you.”

Oh. “Oh,” Castiel breathes, flushed with shame. He doesn’t deserve this. Is it pity? Is it mercy? He’s desperate enough to take it regardless. “You do?”

Dean slides into a chair, and Castiel slides into one across the table from him. “Cas,” Dean starts, and then doesn’t continue.

Castiel swallows. He watches as Dean settles into the space, draws his robe closer around himself. The light is dimmed for nighttime; only the map table and the emergency lights illuminate Dean’s beautiful face. He didn’t tell Dean about what Gog and Magog said about them. He thought it would be a funny anecdote, but after tonight, it doesn’t seem appropriate. He’s afraid of drawing a parallel between those two creatures — disgusting, ridiculous, slobbering, inhuman — and himself.

“Why? We coulda—” Dean closes his eyes. “You didn’t have to do that to Donatello. We coulda found another way.”

He swallows his instinctive response: that there was no other way, that they didn’t have the time to find one. He knows Dean knows, and he knows Dean’s not asking for that, not at two in the morning when his bed is cold and he wants to find a way to invite Castiel in without losing ground. Castiel can accept that. He says quietly, “I needed to protect you. Nothing is worth the risk of losing you.”

Dean looks up at that. “This a normal thing for you? Nuking human brains until they’re vegetables?”

“No,” Castiel says, too quickly. He looks down. He’s so rarely given the chance to defend himself that he jumps at the opportunity, even when he doesn’t deserve it. “I— I swore I would never do that. I’ve never done it before.” He winces, and thinks of Naomi; thinks of the horrors he must have enacted under her control, over the millennia. “I mean, to my knowledge.”

“You could forget something like that?”

“I meant— I meant mind control. Angelic mind control.” Castiel remembers Dean’s face, beaten to a pulp, swollen and bleeding under his own hand. He shivers.

Dean must notice, because he says, kinder, gentler, “You cold?”

Castiel shakes himself out of his daze. “No. No, I’m fine.” 

“Because we could warm up in my room if you wanted,” Dean continues, fire in his eyes and steel in his voice. The words are casual but Castiel knows better. It is hard for Dean to ask for things like this. Castiel is unaccountably proud of him for making the effort tonight.

“All right. Thank you,” Castiel replies, and stands up. Dean does, too, and Castiel follows him to his room, and closes Dean’s bedroom door behind himself.

Dean’s back is turned to him, and Castiel experiences a moment of all-too-human self-doubt. He starts to say, “Do you want me to go,” but before he can get out _Do_ , Dean is speaking. 

“Take the coat off.” Dean turns around, and watches as Castiel removes his trench coat, hanging it up with a careful slowness that comes from nerves. “I— Cas, you’re not gonna sleep in that, are you?”

“I suppose not.” Castiel removes his suit jacket and his belt; then, his pants, and his overshirt, and his tie, and he’s left in an undershirt and briefs. Dean slides under the covers, and Castiel joins him.

They breathe in silence for a while; Castiel reaches over to his side to turn off the bedside lamp, and Dean does the same. Dean reaches for his hand in the dark.

“You’re not just for war,” Dean says, and then pulls his hand back, embarrassed. Castiel reaches for it, reaches for Dean, pulls him into something like a hug, just horizontal. Dean sighs into Castiel’s neck. “I meant,” he continues, voice rumbling softly in Castiel’s ear, “you’re not— you can be gentle too. You don’t have to be a soldier.”

Castiel runs his hand through Dean’s hair. He wants to be worthy of Dean’s vulnerability. “I’m— it’s all I’ve been, for so long,” he says, looking up at the ceiling, but even as he says it he knows it’s wrong. He’s been wiped often enough for his rebellion; in Heaven, rebellion is gentleness, exceptions to the rule, softness in response to softness. But the Winchesters have enough of that. They know the rules and what is permissible when it comes to breaking them. Castiel is more useful as a weapon.

“Come back to me,” Dean says, and Castiel turns to him, meeting his eyes in the dark. “That’s not all you are. You know that.”

“I know,” Castiel admits.

Dean kisses him, then, soft and slow like he’s trying to convince Castiel of his own weakness. It works; Castiel responds in kind, one hand in Dean’s hair and the other running down his back, to hold his hip, thumb circling gently on his skin.

Dean lets out a short, cut off sound in the back of his throat, and Castiel tugs gently so that Dean rolls on top of him, hips grinding down electric sharp and mouth gorgeous and lush on Castiel’s. “Dean,” Castiel grunts, inelegant in the face of Dean’s beauty, smooth and lean even after thirty-nine years.

“Yeah,” Dean breathes into his jawline, nipping at Castiel’s neck while his hands trace circles on Castiel’s chest, his side, “yeah, c’mon.”

Castiel fumbles a hand into Dean’s boxers, rubbing his thumb gently just under the head of his dick. “Oh _fuck_ ,” Dean huffs out into the space next to Castiel’s ear, “fuck, yeah— God—”

“‘S dry,” Castiel says hoarsely, “Dean, can you—” and he brings his thumb up to Dean’s lips and Dean, beautiful perfect Dean, sucks it into his mouth. Castiel watches, no doubt as wide-eyed as the first time they did this, while Dean gets his thumb wet, and then his first two fingers.

A trail of spit follows Castiel’s thumb as he pulls it away from Dean’s mouth, and Castiel swallows dry. He reaches for Dean’s dick again, tugging and Dean groans. “How do you make that so good,” he chokes out, “no matter what you do, your hands on me, just—”

“It’s you,” Castiel says, watching the line of Dean’s throat as he throws his head back, rutting into Castiel’s hand, “it’s you, you’re perfect—”

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Dean gasps, planting his hand next to Castiel’s head. “Babe, that’s—”

“Come,” Castiel growls, an honest to God growl comes out of him despite his efforts to be gentle and calm and soft, “Dean—”

“Unh—” Dean whimpers as Castiel strokes him through his orgasm and beyond it, reveling in his twitches and shivers, until finally Dean pushes him away. “Fuck, Cas.”

“You’re beautiful,” Castiel says, earnest and unable to censor himself in the face of Dean like this, wide open and tired out. 

“You,” Dean objects eloquently, and fumbles his way to Castiel’s underwear. “Can I suck your dick?”

“I— you don’t—” Castiel watches as Dean kneels on the bed, pushing Castiel’s shirt up with one hand and pulling down his briefs with another. “Dean, you don’t have to.” 

“I wanna,” is all Dean says before he licks at Castiel’s dick, sucking at the tip before going for more, inch by inch. Castiel always thinks Dean is beautiful, but like this, his mouth stretched open and eyes blissed out from his own orgasm, he’s divine.

“That’s good,” Castiel manages to say through the pleasant buzz under his skin and the feeling of Dean’s hair on his oversensitive skin, “Dean, that’s so—”

Dean hums something around Castiel’s dick, and it feels good, it feels so good. Castiel strokes his thumb gently over the upper curve of Dean’s ear, reveling in Dean’s full body shudder. “Come— come here, Dean—” and Dean comes up for air and loses it again by kissing Castiel, his right hand still stroking Castiel. “Yess— yes, Dean, _Dean—_ ” and Castiel comes all over himself, left hand gripped tight in Dean’s hair and right hand on Dean’s left shoulder. Maybe Dean’s skin has forgotten their first meeting, but Castiel hasn’t.

Dean kisses Castiel’s shoulder as he comes down from his high. “You with me?” he mumbles into Castiel’s skin. 

“Yes,” Castiel says, hand splayed out in the center of Dean’s back. Dean starts to drop off, and Castiel hastily maneuvers his legs awkwardly to take off his underwear, already ruined from his sweat and the stretch from being pushed down to his thighs, which he uses to wipe them down.

Dean lays a hand, possessive, on Castiel’s hip. “You don’t belong to this war,” Dean murmurs sleepily. “You’re mine.”

Castiel doesn’t think Dean would’ve said it if he were more awake, but maybe that makes it more true, not less. He wants to agree with Dean, but even after Dean gave him another undeserved chance, even after Dean showed him what it was to be gentle again, Castiel isn’t sure he can.

He’s made for war. And soldiers, no matter how good they want to be at pretending, never last long in peacetime.


End file.
